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Friday, October 07, 2005

In Johno’s Night Kitchen, vol. n+1

I don’t suppose the preponderance of Texans we count among our member- and readership will have much use for this recipe, but for those of you in more northerly climes, this is recipe comes directly from my heart to you. It is a fairly simple* fall and winter soup, perfect for those nights when you can get a pleasant buzz on and fart a lot at home contentedly while the freezing wind whips the trees outside.

Vegetable Borscht with Barley

This simple vegetarian vegetable soup has a surprising depth of flavor - earthy, sweet, green, warm, and tangy. It is almost more like a stew than a soup as presented, thanks to the amount of vegetables. If you want a thinner soup, feel free to add more stock and kick up the dill and caraway a tiny bit to amplify their flavor. I like it this way, though. It takes me back to an imagined ancestry in the great sweep of Eastern Europe from Swabia and Poland all the way to Romania, sort of a Swabopolskiczechohungariromanimoldovan cuisine. Or just call it Fake Transylvanian for short. Stay tuned for my Thai-Italian fusion cuisine!

If you wish to use canned beets, you can, but nothing tops roasted beets for complexity. Frozen vegetables are absolutely okay in this soup, but be sure to par-cook any greens beforehand so they don’t make the soup bitter.

3 medium carrots, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 large onions, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced (vary to taste)
2 tsp dill seeds
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp dried thyme (more if stock contains no thyme)
1/2 cup hulled barley (the brown stuff preferably, not pearl)
6-8 cups lightly- or un-salted beef, chicken, or vegetable stock or water (at least some of which stock)
1 medium head green cabbage, shredded
6 medium beets (total 8-12 oz), roasted, peeled & diced
other vegetables as desired: green beans, turnips, turnip greens, kale, etc., I wouldn’t use potatoes but you certainly may)
1/2 bunch parsley, finely chopped
1 T vinegar, red wine or cider
salt
pepper
vegetable oil

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and add carrots, celery, onions, garlic, and 1/2 tsp salt. Sweat until onions are translucent, about 7 minutes. Add caraway, dill, and thyme, reduce heat a bit, and cook about 5 minutes more.

Add liquid and barley. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Add cabbage, beets, and other vegetables and cook for about 20 minutes more. If necessary, add more liquid to cover. Adjust salt at this time.

Add pepper, vinegar, and parsley and cook 5 minutes. Taste and adjust one last time before serving.

This recipe could easily be converted for omnivores by the addition of maybe a pound of cubed stew meat browned in the pan prior to adding the aromatics and cooking until tender prior to adding the cabbage.

Serve with, oh, maybe a side of potato or sauerkraut pierogis fried with onions, or bread and butter and cheese, plus definitely lots of cold beer or Reisling for an authentically faux-Eastern Bloc experience. Now I’m hungry.

[Wik] * About that word, simple. Of course this recipe is simple; it’s a soup! But like so many things, “simple” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as “easy.” Stir-fries are simple, but the entire vocabulary of cooking them is fundamentally different than what Western cooks innately do. And baguettes- they are one of the easiest recipes for good bread going, but they sure aren’t simple. Chess is easy too. Bouillabaisse isn’t that hard, but there sure as hell is a trick to getting it to taste anything like the sublime fish soup of coastal France.

And, I suppose, no recipe is simple if you don’t have a sense of how big “dice” should be, or what “salt to taste” means when you’re standing over the pot with the saltshaker, or what a simmer is. So, I take it back, the word “simple.”

[Alsø wik] Comrade Hall asks how to roast beets. Easy! First, you need to kill your beets. As unfortunate as this is, beet flesh deteriorates very rapidly after death, so you must buy live ones. They are fast, slippery and surprisingly strong little buggers with a lot of fight in them, so this is often a challenge. The traditional method is to stuff one into a sack, grab it by the tail, and beat its head against a hard surface until it stops fighting. Then beat it some more because the treacherous little bastard might be faking. Then, the gutting. Trust me; the payoff for all this is delicious.

Oh wait, wait. Sorry, that was eels.

Beets.

First you need to kill your beets.

No. Damn.

Always buy beets with the greens attached. If the greens are sturdy and healthy, you’ve got to vegetables for the price of one. If not, they are still a guarantee that the roots are strong and fresh and not old, woody, and tasteless. For this recipe, one or two “bunches” will do, whatever your market or local dirt farmer calls a “bunch.”

Remove the greens, leaving 1/2 to 1 inch of stem. Set greens aside to cook or pitch as necessary. Scrub beets gently to remove clinging dirt (though you will eventually peel them, dirt on the beets can contribute a dirty flavor (as opposed to earthy) to the final product) and pat dry. Do not peel at this time. Place beets on a layer of foil. At this point, if desired you can hit them with a little vegetable oil to promote fast cooking**. You can also slip some thyme and salt and pepper in the mix if so desired. I usually don’t. Fold the beets up well into a rough packet, whatever you can manage.  If you must divide the beets into two separate packets in order to close the foil around the beets, do so. Repeat with a second layer of foil, making sure that the beets are tightly wrapped - we want the steam, for the most part, to stay in. This goes double for the sugar-rich purple juices which will blacken in a second if they get free into the oven, and will stain the hell out of your clothes, hot-pads, and anything else they come near.

Place your double-wrapped beets on a baking sheet and place in a well-preheated (which means, “at temperature for at least 20 minutes with the door closed") 350-degree oven. Beets always take longer than you expect, so smallish to medium size ones will take about an hour, and very large ones can go 90 minutes or more. They are done when a paring knife penetrates to the middle with practically no resistance. (Beets will tend to stay a little harder than other vegetables thanks to their cell-wall makeup.)

Remove from oven, and cool until you can handle them. Then, under running water slip the skins right off with your fingers. Voila.

In case that was too much info, here’s the executive summary:
Cut off greens
Scrub
Wrap tightly in double layer of foil
350 degrees, 1 hour to 90 minutes
Cool, peel, enjoy.

** As you know, fats transfer heat more efficiently than water or air. So, by rubbing the skins of the beets with fat you are theoretically aiding the transfer of heat from the oven to the interior of the vegetable. Whether or not this effect is detectable in shortened cooking time is debatable. It probably helps a bit. On the other hand, always oil your baked taters, because the skin will turn out nice and browned and chewy, all of which probably does help the potato’s inside to cook.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

She said, “Stiff”

Peggy Noonan on a larger issue hidden in the littler issue:

The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They’re in uproar over Ms. Miers, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.

Peggy offers some possible answers, but I fear that it might be the last one, “Maybe he’s totally blowing it with his base, and in so doing endangering the present meaning and future prospects of his party.”

Yet more Miers blather

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Exploitation You say that like its a bad thing

A disquisition on the economics of bumvertising.

Bum + Advertising.  Sweet!

The ubiquitous brick wall mocks my cold despair

The Hall of Douchebags, with (as an added bonus) a shitload of brick walls.  If you’re in a band, remember: your band sucks.

Deep thoughts about Human/Martian relations

People of Mars, you say we are brutes and savages. But let me tell you one thing: if I could get loose from this cage you have me in, I would tear you guys a new Martian asshole.

...You claim there are other intelligent beings in the galaxy besides earthlings and Martians. Good, then we can attack them together. And after we’re through attacking them we’ll attack you.

...You keep my body imprisoned in this cage. But I am able to transport my mind to a place far away, a happier place, where I use Martian heads for batting practice.

...You may kill me, either on purpose or by not making sure that all the surfaces in my cage are safe to lick. But you can’t kill an idea. And that idea is: me chasing you with a big wooden mallet.

DeLay, meet Ham Sandwich

The saying goes, you can indict a ham sandwich.  Apparently, it has been revealed that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle failed at least once to get an indictment against DeLay.  Witness:

A Travis County grand jury last week refused to indict former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as prosecutors raced to salvage their felony case against the Sugar Land Republican.

In a written statement Tuesday, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle acknowledged that prosecutors presented their case to three grand juries — not just the two they had discussed — and one grand jury refused to indict DeLay.

Not that DeLay is supercool, and I want him to be godfather to my next child - but I think that this is all a bit of a witch hunt on the part of an overzealous and a tad bit politically motivated Mr. Earle.

Let us continue to pick nits

While I don’t feel as Johno does that the recent appointment of Harriet Miers is some sort of presumptive ass covering, I am beginning to feel more strongly that this nomination should be stiff armed by the Senate.  While Miers is no doubt a bright, pleasant and even (let us grant) deeply conservative person; I am not prepared to take on trust Bush’s assertion that she is the best qualified candidate for one of the more important jobs in our republic.

A common refrain among Bush supporters, and one that I have on occasion used myself, is that Bush is right about the big things even if he occasionally commits some egregious pooch-screwing on the little things.  This, however, is a big thing.  One of the bigger things.  Possibly the biggest, short of the war on terror itself.  My stepmom voted for Bush second time around despite her deep opposition to the war for this reason alone.  She wanted conservatives appointed to the big bench, and as we have seen Bush is having many opportunities to do so, and might have yet more.

Roberts was a suitable candidate.  He is widely respected in the legal profession, adn is clearly as conservative as Rehnquist, who he is now replacing.  But this nomination is the real big one, because we are replacing O’Connor - a swing vote. 

George Will hits several very good points in his most recent essay.  First is this:

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption—perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting—should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks. The president’s “argument’’ for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’ nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers’ name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

This gets back to the argument against cronyism from Federalist 76.  Were I president and nominating a candidate for the Supreme Court, I could select my cousin Chris for the job.  I can be certain that Chris would be reliably conservative for the next several decades and ensure that the court goes in a way that I want.  That doesn’t make Chris a bad person, but neither would it convince anyone that he was the best candidate for the position.

There are so many talented, respected conservative candidates that it is almost insulting that Bush should pick Meirs.

Will moves on and brings out the big, spikey bat:

In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked—to insure a considered response from him, he had been told in advance he would be asked—whether McCain-Feingold’s core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, “I agree.’’ Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, “I do.’’

This gets to the heart of the matter.  Bush clearly either lacks comprehension or conviction on the issue of constitutional responsibility.  The Congress has been lacking this for most of a century, and large parts of the Supreme Court for decades.  If we had a President who got it, we might redress some of the damage that has been done.  The Constitution is the contract we all live by, and you can’t go violating the terms of it without storing up some bad karma.  The Constitution includes means for amendment, and that should be exercised rather than bending the Constitution out of all recognition.

Will continues:

The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers’ confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent—a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer’s career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

Under the rubric of “diversity’’—nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses—the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one’s essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal—that one’s nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can only be understood, empathized with and represented by a member of that group.

The crowning absurdity of the president’s wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who “legislate from the bench.’’

I can’t really add to that.

This nomination is not an abomination that should be resisted to the last breath.  But it is a bitchslap to the face of the body politic.  I disagree with ideologues using the Senate to enforce litmus tests on candidates for the courts, or indeed for other positions of responsibility.  But the Senate does have a responsibility - detailed in Federalist 76 and elsewhere - to weed out the sick, the weak and the incompetant.  A sort of Darwinian control on Presidential appointments.  John Tower was a drunk, and was rightly bounced for secdef.  Abe Fortas was righteously bounced for being a crony of LBJ.  Bork was wrongly bounced for ideological reasons when everyone knew that he was more qualified in terms of constitutional acumen than anyone then on the bench. 

There are plenty of good candidates.  Alito, McConnell and Luttig right off the top of my head.  Maybe we should wait and see if we can do better.

Once More Round The Horn About That Miers Person

At the risk of sounding a little paranoid, here’s a scenario. Say Miers makes it to the Supremes. What happens if, in a few years, a gigantic case or two relating to the activities of Bush I or II while in office come down the pike? The Bush clan are major players in the international development scene, and have been involved in a bushel of morally and ethically dubious and legally questionable enterprises, along with their not-as-erstwhile-as-might-be-hoped friends the Sauds and the like. What if --- what if—and I’m just saying, something real ugly comes to light and the case makes it all the way to the big leagues.

Would close personal friend and leader of the fanclub Miers recuse herself? Would she not? Is it possible that W doesn’t care what constitutional crises he might be flirting with? Does this help explain some of the reasoning behind this pick?

Reading it back, that sounds uncomfortably like Kossite Kool-Ade, but bless my timid fencesitting soul, that’s where my head is going when I think about the implications of this nomination. All the more reason that a crony, no matter how qualified, august and Solomonic they may be, are not suitable candidates for the SCOTUS.

[Wik] Speaking of… can anybody please recollect for me why exactly Bush I chose to take out Manuel Noriega? What act of belligerence against the United States or its treaty-bound allies triggered that invasion? 

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

The 39th will be the 43rd?

Forgive me, but I get the inescapable impression that in trying to do his best, George W. Bush is coming in his second term to resemble more and more none other than… Jimmy Carter. Think about it. He has stocked his talent pool with Texan cronies and other assorted yes-men and seems determined to rely only on their supposedly ex-Beltway judgment for counsel (disregarding Cheney and Rumsfeld, for whom family connections apply) for better or worse. His domestic initiatives are foundering, his international initiatives are suffering from terminal lack of focus, and on a personal level he is a religous man prone to make snap judgments about people’s qualities.

I know it’s a stretch and probably unfair to both George and Jimmy, but that’s the way I sees it.

[Wik] With the obvious caveat, of course, that nobody ever doubted Jimmy Carter’s integrity.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Supreme Idiocy?

When I first heard rumors that Miers was on the list of potential Supreme Court nominees, I thought to myself, “Myself, given Bush’s propensity to promote loyalists - a propensity that verges on, nay tapdances on the line of cronyism - she’s going to be the one.  You just watch.”

Myself had no real arguments against this kind of solid reasoning.  And lo and behold, there it is.  A person with no notable qualifications for the position save a near fanatical devotion to the President is nominated.  A person who, it seems, used to be a Democrat and once donated money to Al Gore’s presidential campaign.  To be sure, that was the earlier, saner Gore.  Not the more recent android replicant Gore of 2000.  As a conservative I have nothing but Bush’s assurance that this is the real deal, a full octane strict constructionist.  Someone who, once on the court, will not do a Souter and list dangerously to port.  The list of conservative commentators irritated by this nomination is longer than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick.  People are righteously pissed that qualified, solid conservatives were passed over for Miers.

Maybe it will all work out.  Maybe there is some dastardly Roveian scheme at work.  But Sen. Reid is already saying she’s cool even before the oppo-research lads have gotten a crack at her.  That, to me, is a very bad sign, seeing as he voted against Roberts. 

This is the Bad Bush at work.  We’ve been seeing a lot more of him lately.  And I’m frustrated. 

Clinton pursued what was in effect a scorched-earth strategy so far as the rest of his party was concerned.  Whatever success he achieved was not transferrable to the party at large, and yet they were saddled with all of his negatives whether they deserved them or not.  This was largely a function of his narcisism and ego.

The flap over DeLay, and lingering questions about Rove and Plamegate will not bother the electorate a year from now.  But if Bush continues on this track, he will be doing to his party through stupidity and blind reward of loyalty what Clinton did to his through priapism and perjury.  The Republicans are not doing anything right now to make their base happy.  And unhappy bases do not go out and vote in mid term elections.

Who will be in the crosshairs next?

The new Hurricane Forecast for October calls for continued high levels of activity.  Tropical Storm Stan is expected to grow to Hurricane force before slamming into Mexico this week.  And that is named storm #18.  The record is 21, back in 1933, with 21.  Just four more to set a new record, and also for the first time completely run through the list of names set aside every year.  Personally, I think that seeing Hurricane Alpha would be sweet, so long as it doesn’t hit where I live.  I want to see it on the weather channel, not outside my house.

Of couse, this is all just another sign of Bush induced global eco-apocalypse.  Unless of course, global warming is caused by, I don’t know, the Sun.

Bizarre Moments in Johno’s Life, chapter 4,603

This last Saturday, for the second time this calendar year, a doctor has said to me, “congratulations, we have ruled out any possibility of autoimmune disorders.”

How frigging random is that?

Felicitations are in order

A happy Rosh Hashana to our Jewish readers and friends! And Wednesday marks Ee’e’eee’e’e’neee, the dolphin festival of liberation from their shark overlords several millennia ago. A happy week to all, our Semitic and our aquatic friends alike!

Once again, it’s a fine line between genius and stupidity.

This morning, President Bush tapped a bootlicking toady for the Supreme Court slot recently vacated by O’Connor. Harriet Miers is White House counsel and has known Bush since forever, having served with him while he was governer of Texas. She is reputed to be one of the Bush camp’s most fervent believers (that’s really sayin’ som’n), and David Frum has quoted her as telling him that Bush is the most brilliant man she’s ever met.

Now, really. That’s just over the damn top.

What game could Bush possibly be playing by nominating not only a crony, and not only an unknown, but an unknown crony who thinks he hangs the moon and whose qualifications for the Supreme Court are, well, tissue-thin? Well, I’ll tell you.

A hundred dollars says that Bush has floated Miers’ name as an “eff you” to all and sundry who think he’s headed in the wrong direction. He takes loyalty very seriously and obviously tends to reward faithfulness over competence, and also famously hates to hear bad news or be contradicted. So there’s that dynamic at play, this time nationwide rather than in the confines of staff meetings.

But there’s something deeper here. Her nomination is likely to piss off his opponents and supporters alike. If she goes down in flames, well, so what? Bush wins whether Miers gets the confirmation or not. If she does, it’s a lovely gift for a close personal friend whose heart he has looked into deeply and seen the good inside (viz. Putin), and as he sees it probably a lock on someone dependable to cement his legacy for the next two decades or so. 

And if Miers goes down the loser, Bush is banking that in the aftermath of a failed confirmation fight, nobody but nobody will have the stomach to fight a brutal, extended, and potentially politically suicidal second round over the inevitable super-conservative follow-up candidate like, say, Janice Rogers Brown.

If that fight happens and his second choice is blocked (or even if things start looking shaky for that second choice) Bush & co. are betting that this will give him a chance to go to the nation with hands raised in despair over the flotilla of cranks, radicals, and secular-humanist faggot-lovers (present!) that make up the other side these days. Advantage: Bush!

Or, he could just be a cronyist idiot.

[Wik] Obsidian Wings has a rundown of reactions from across the web. Guess what: they’re mostly negative. Either W is playing a very long and subtle hand, or his failings of imagination are bigger than I’d ever thought.

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